Powering the Nation’s Transition to Cleantech

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Looking around Fremont, you won’t see many of the six-story glass office buildings that make up the skylines of other Silicon Valley cities. Instead, you’ll see massive, single-story concrete buildings. They might not look as impressive on the outside, but inside there is significant, sustainable innovation being brought to life.

You see, we’re a leader in the clean energy manufacturing space, and our building infrastructure reflects that. In fact, 8 million square feet of industrial space in Fremont are currently being used by cleantech companies.

These buildings are where local talents strategize sustainable solutions for the world’s most pressing issues — from reducing carbon emissions to generating renewable energy and making our cities more resilient against climate-change related disasters.

Fremont boasts over 20,000 cleantech jobs, which by our calculations is more than any city in the country. These skilled workers support a robust range of companies that design and manufacture cleantech products here, from prototyping and pilot production to high-volume manufacturing and everything in between.

 

Epicenter of Cleantech

We fashion ourselves as the cleantech epicenter of Silicon Valley. Growth-stage cleantech (and increasingly referred to as climate-tech) companies will often choose to locate their operations in Fremont to be a part of our robust cleantech environment. In fact, Fremont is home to over 50 companies advancing technologies in batteries, energy generation, and automotive industries.

“We’ve seen incredible growth in our first two years, with global partnerships, significant funding, and a truly differentiated grid-scale energy storage solution,” said Jorg Heinemann, CEO, EnerVenue. “In vetting locations for our long-term future, we considered our aggressive development plans and the facilities we’ll require for what’s to come. We’re proud to be able to continue to build and grow in the City of Fremont.”

We’re also proud of our growing list of innovative companies pioneering the way toward a more resilient and sustainable future. Here are just a few:

  • Bloom Energy, a green energy company that converts fuel into electricity, announced in July 2022 the opening of its new cutting-edge factory in Fremont, which will manufacture hydrogen fuel servers — expanding into its third building in the city and creating an estimated 400+ jobs by year-end.
  • Cutting-edge battery maker EnerVenue completed a lease agreement on a new 64,000-square-foot headquarters and manufacturing facility in Fremont to further its mission of building utility-scale nickel-hydrogen stationary batteries.
  • Market leaders in the solar panel industry, such as Enphase, Nextracker, and Solaria, are headquartered in Fremont.
  • Enovix develops 3D cell technology and production processes for electric vehicles and energy storage markets to enable the widespread utilization of renewable energy and recently announced the first customer shipments from its silicon-anode lithium-ion battery production facility in Fremont, called Fab 1.
  • We also have microgrid companies like GridScape, Gotion, and Energport, which support a flexible and efficient electric grid by integrating growing deployments of distributed energy resources such as renewables like solar.

And, of course, we can’t forget Tesla, which operates multiple new and innovative battery production lines in Fremont and has ultimately acted as a catalyst for other cleantech companies to move to Fremont to tap into our innovative ecosystem.

Case in point: Lithium-ion battery manufacturer Amprius moved its headquarters to Fremont to be close to Tesla and recently delivered its first batch of commercially available lithium-ion cells for use in electric vehicles, aircraft, and more, improving energy density for high power applications.

And there’s more to come.

These companies flock to Fremont because our ecosystem is tuned for energy-related companies, offering a robust supply chain network, an incredibly skilled labor pool that allows for the fast growth of R&D teams, supportive zoning policies, and unique building typography within Silicon Valley.

 

Doing Our Part to Advance the Cleantech Transition

On August 12, 2022, the revolutionary Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, which includes around $370 billion in clean energy and climate investments over the next 10 years, was enacted into law. This is a huge step forward for clean energy and climate legislation and will propel the cleantech companies in Fremont to continue to innovate, grow, and introduce more jobs to our local economy.

At the City level, we pride ourselves in becoming subject matter experts for these advanced industries. In addition to highly supportive zoning policies, City employees have all made it a point to be well versed in the technologies and the complex operations that these companies often require. You can visit our Fremont Toolbox for more information.

We’re even a leader in public-private partnership technology demonstration projects, including acquiring one of the nation’s first Tesla police patrol vehicles and using Fremont-based technologies to run three of our fire stations on microgrids.

All of this means we’re at the forefront in the fight against the impending climate crisis, and we are helping to ensure a sustainable future by enabling our local companies to accelerate the transition toward clean energy — the race begins now.